


All Talk

by orchidbreezefc



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Deaf Character, Disability, Gen, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 14:12:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18152891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchidbreezefc/pseuds/orchidbreezefc
Summary: For the Tumblr prompt: "Your hands are so much larger than mine."





	All Talk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badskeletonpuns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badskeletonpuns/gifts).



> EDIT: Thank you so much to the endlessly talented Domi, who drew a companion image to this fic (see the bottom)! Find more of her work at her Tumblr [link: [here](https://domirine.tumblr.com/)].

Accidents happen, especially in this town. Bad things happen to good people, or at least people like Sammy Stevens, who has not always been good, but has been trying his ass off for a long time. Things like the void, the Doorstep, the rainbow lights--they  _take_  things from you, things you cannot always predict, things you do not always get back.

Emily got back her memories, eventually. The doctors, Ben writes to him with shaking fingers, are not sure Sammy will be so lucky.

For a while, notebooks are a necessary evil. Sammy hates this twist of irony, figures the void was listening to his fucking issues with those, from both Jack and Ben, and that’s why it took his hearing, to make him deal with more bullshit writing on the wall. Ben gets a new one, though, a blank one purely for use with Sammy. 

If Sammy were more poetically-inclined, he’d have a lot to say about how it was some sort of symbolic tossing of the old shit that got between them and using this new one as a bridge. But he’s not, and sure as shit will never be now. Just like he won’t be a radio host. Just like he’ll never hear Ben’s voice again. Or Jack’s, but he gave up on that a long time ago.

Ben’s handwriting is atrocious, is the thing. And it’s slow. And it just feels  _wrong_  when Sammy says something casually, a sentence lost to his own ears but for the vibration through his jaw, and Ben has to scramble for a pencil to get back to him. They both hate it. And Sammy just can’t seem to get the hang of lip-reading, try as he might--he knows the vowel sounds, mostly, but the consonants are impossible.

One day Ben has an entire fucking letter written for Sammy by the time he wakes up. Sammy reads it aloud back to him, even though he himself can’t hear it, just so that he can interject skeptically at the right times. But then his voice falters when he reads past Ben’s waffling introduction and comes to the words ‘sign language’.

Ben twists his fingers together nervously as Sammy stops reading aloud and sweeps his eyes over the rest of the letter–Ben found a really highly-recommended Youtube course, he has an HDMI cord (whatever that is) and figures it made sense to sit down, maybe forty-five minutes a day, and try it out.  _Has to be better than this bullshit, right_?

Sammy looks up at Ben. Words fail him, or more accurately, they fail Ben, because they would have failed Sammy regardless of whether he had any. Ben looks even more anxious, trying to gauge Sammy’s reaction, and Sammy realizes he’s left him hanging.

“You really want to–? I mean… that’s a whole new language, Ben. With words and grammar and everything.”

Ben’s fingers untangle from their anxious knot and he slowly lifts them. Sammy watches in disbelief as Ben makes a series of movements--points to himself; gestures like a toss over his shoulder; mimes pinching something off one hand and touching it to his head; pushes his hands, held flat, together, like miming a box; and finally, turns his pointer fingers in a circle like a wheel. The whole time Ben is making this incredibly sheepish expression.

Then Ben sits down and gently takes the notebook from Sammy.  _< I already learned a little bit of sign language>, _he writes. He glances up self-consciously at Sammy’s face, and continues writing.  _That’s what I just said. I learned some. Just to see if the course was OK. And I think we could do it._  

Nobody has ever, ever offered to do anything like this for Sammy, let alone done it with such an apologetic attitude, like he’s afraid Sammy could possibly be  _upset._ Like Sammy would be  _mad about_  Ben deciding to learn a goddamn language just to make his life a bit easier.

“God, Ben,” he says, sure his voice breaks, and wraps his hands around Ben’s. “I cannot believe–you’re a fucking miracle. Yeah. Yes. Let’s do it.”

Ben grins ear to ear, then laughs. Sammy can’t hear the noise, but he can feel the vibration through his hands and body, and see the glee on his face. Ben shakes his head and holds his hand up with Sammy’s, Tarzan-and-Jane style, before interlocking them. Ben’s hands are so much smaller than his. Sammy looks forward to hearing Ben again through them.


End file.
